1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data providing apparatus and a data providing method for providing content such as music data to subscribers via a network such as the Internet. More particularly, the invention relates to a data providing apparatus and a data providing method capable of effectively discriminating handling of data and contents of offered services in accordance with the state of download of content.
2. Description of the Related Art
With recent remarkable development of data communication technologies and prevalence of personal computers, various business using the Internet have been devised. A typical business is a content providing service that provides content such as music data in response to a request from the user.
In the content providing service, a server computer, which holds content such as music data, posts the content on a so-called home page, thus making it published on the network. When the user of a client computer, who accesses the home page via the network, has instructed provision of desired content on the home page, the server computer transmits the content to the client computer according to the instruction. On the other hand, the client computer, from which the provision of the desired content has been instructed, receives the content that has been transmitted according to the instruction. The received content is stored in a storage medium such as a memory card or a magnetic disk. The acquisition of the content by the client computer is called, for example, “download.”
The client computer is equipped with software for using (e.g. reproducing) the content downloaded in the storage medium such as a memory card or a magnetic disk. Thus, the user can acquire desired content via the network at any time, and use the acquired content many times.
When a plurality of contents are posted on a home page, how to arrange the contents on the home page is very important for a content provider. The reason is that the arrangement of contents influences the number of times of download of contents. More specifically, it is effective to assign a popular content at a conspicuous position with a large space. It is thus desirable to manage the home page such that a content with a large number of times of download is posted under such conditions.
In the prior art, however, the manager of a home page manually determines and manages the arrangement of contents on the home page on the basis of a result of a market research, etc. There is no practice of automatically managing the arrangement of contents on the home page on the basis of the number of times of content download.
Nor is there any practice of determining the content of an additional service provided to the user or determining the price of content, on the basis of the number of times of content download.